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Abstract

To the editor: Morris and associates (1) stated that "a genetic predisposition has been described for Kaposi's sarcoma. Persons having the HLA-Dr5 alloantigen have a 5.5-fold greater risk for developing the tumor." We would like to point out that this is an erroneous interpretation of data presented by Friedman-Kien and associates (2) in the same issue. Friedman-Kien and associates saw a significant increase in the frequency of Dr5 alloantigen in patients with Kaposi's sarcoma relative to the control group regardless of their sexual preference. They concluded that "these figures show a relative risk of 5.57 of possessing the Dr5 allele